By Shaenon K. Garrity

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This is the first strip I wrote for this storyline. Everything else is built around it. I wrote it pretty early in the run of Narbonic, wrote a few more strips around the idea of Dave infiltrating Madblood’s headquarters, and couldn’t think of any other material for a long time. Then one day I came up with the idea of Dave infiltrating Madblood’s headquarters on the moon, and the whole thing magically fell together.

Andrew helped me with a lot of the plotting of this storyline, especially later on.

This one has a lame punchline, but I like the initial conversation between Dave and Helen. Sometimes I like the beginning of a strip much better than the end.

It’s probably worth noting that I ran the Sunday Robot Battle Anthem Contest without telling anyone what the robot army would actually look like. So, um, here it is. A whole mess of Madbloods. I hope the anthem writers weren’t too disappointed.

You know, that really is a lot of Madbloods.

The computer’s being snobby here; whether or not the androids are quite as self-aware as she is, they certainly seem to have some level of self-awareness and personalities. In fact, they’re probably too advanced to make good battle robots, but Madblood got carried away when he was making them.

At this point in the story I have given myself entirely too many Madbloods to draw. In fact, from here on out most of the cast of this storyline will look like either Madblood or Dave–or, more often, both. I thought it would be funny and didn’t consider until it was too late how sick I would get of drawing Madblood.

I’m sorry, I still enjoy this ridiculous conversation. How did Madblood learn to speak in such purple prose? It’s like he comes from another century.

It suddenly occurs to me that the third panel, after Madblood takes off his spacesuit but before he puts on his lab coat, may be the most undressed we ever see Madblood. No, I tell a lie–I think he has his sleeves rolled up at some point in “Professor Madblood and the Lovelace Affair.”

The art in this strip was strongly influenced by the way Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer draw chibis. The fleeing crowd in the second panel includes me, Andrew, and Hutch Owen and Oswald, characters of Tom Hart’s who appeared in our comic Trunktown. The best detail in the strip, however, is Madblood’s drawing in the last panel. Yes, those are heads on pikes.

I was still pretty bad at drawing hands.

Yeah, so now the moonbase contains 15,002 Madbloods, one computerized voice, and Mell. I keep getting into drawing crowds of identical characters. Don’t know what’s up with that.

I like that there’s a “Please Do Not Tap Glass” sign outside the enormous chamber that contains Madblood’s robot army. That could irritate them!

In thinking back to the previous time you told of this storyline’s creative process, it is obvious that my initial assessment was quite wrong. The ‘moonbase’ detail has, I now see, little to do with these robots or Madblood himself, and everything to do with Dave getting onto the moon and Dave et al. getting off of the moon. By bookending and propping up this infiltration chapter, the core of the arc, with those extravagant and not-quite-as-relevant space-travel chapters, a complete arc is formed.

Leon: The moonbase does more than that. Like Madblood’s Arctic base, it sets up the biggest possible contrast to his mother’s basement. Also, it’s a good excuse to ensure that there’s no chance of Helen physically showing up and fixing everything. All in all, it’s plot-vital.

Dave van Domelen: Ow!Sarge: talk about egotism…. But in general, humaniform robots have a number of advantages. These apparently can’t pass for human (though you can’t tell that from the art), but in addition to whatever robotic talents they may have, they can use whatever weapons or tools come to hand (so to speak).

@David: It’s possible that they are good enough to pass for human among normal people. Even if they were perfect duplicates, I’d still expect Dave to recognize them because a) he’s got a lot of experience with Mad Science, b) he’s almost supernaturally good with machines, and c) there’s 15,000 of them and Helen’s already told him that clones take just as long to mature as normal humans.

Not all clones. Helen had a normal (for certain values of “normal”) period of maturation, but the body Dave himself is using is (despite current appearances) a clone of his original, and certainly didn’t take twenty-some-odd years to produce.

@Leon: Well, as we find out in a subsequent Sunday, the robots prefer to eat out of hubcaps, but surely those are not always available, whereas they surely will always have their glasses, and second best is often acceptable.

Well, if the ‘bots didn’t have glasses, they wouldn’t look like Madblood, now would they?I note that unlike Dave’s glasses, this robot’s “glasses” are thick and fixed against their face — presumably built in.

@Leon: OK, I’m on Earth, myself, and my space station is at Lagrange point 1. Now, me being a good launch director, I wanna sent a resupply rocket to the space station. Now when the rocket gets there, somebody’s gotta unload it, right? So, WHO is unloading the supplies?!

I don’t know if I could duplicate him, but I’ve come to understand a bit of how Madblood’s madness works. He, it seems to me, is of the opinion that there is a Way For Mad Scientists To Act, and does his best to act accordingly. Thus the lab coat and tie; thus the purple prose.

If Helen can use the anti-gravity formula invented by the Victorian Helen, then perhaps our Madblood found a dusty old book on the Etiquette of Mad Science in his mum’s attic (or basement) that was written by his ancestor?

This shows you the quality of service you get from Mad Scientists in Narbonic. Most evil geniuses would simply explain their diabolical masterplans to you at great length (thus, if you’re a hero, giving you both the information and the time you need to foil them). In Narbonic, they’ll go the extra mile and use illustrations.

“Once my army of robot duplicates is complete” – well, I was just thinking that the current thousand or so didn’t appear quite sufficient to subdue every continent at once. No doubt Madblood employs each of the existing Madbots to construct the next batch, meaning that his robot ranks grow exponentially, and he’ll be able to launch an attack by about next week. Sinister!